A complete time-calibrated multi-gene phylogeny of the European butterflies

By

Wiemers, Martin, 1966-
Chazot, Nicolas
Wheat, Christopher
Schweiger, Oliver
Wahlberg, Niklas

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2020

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

938

Pages

97--124

Subjects

Butterflies of Europe , divergence times , macroecology , Phylogeny , time tree

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.938.50878

 

Abstract

With the aim of supporting ecological analyses in butterflies, the third most species-rich superfamily of Lepidoptera, this paper presents the first time-calibrated phylogeny of all 496 extant butterfly species in Europe, including 18 very localised endemics for which no public DNA sequences had been available previously. It is based on a concatenated alignment of the mitochondrial gene COI and up to eleven nuclear gene fragments, using Bayesian inferences of phylogeny. To avoid analytical biases that could result from our region-focussed sampling, our European tree was grafted upon a global genus-level backbone butterfly phylogeny for analyses. In addition to a consensus tree, the posterior distribution of trees and the fully concatenated alignment are provided for future analyses. Altogether a complete phylogenetic framework of European butterflies for use by the ecological and evolutionary communities is presented.